Healthcare services typically involve provisioning care to patients using one or more patient devices. As used herein, a “patient device” refers to any device, machine, and/or computing system for providing healthcare-related services, such as patient monitoring, patient care, and/or the like. A patient device may include any device used to perform a monitoring function pertaining to a patient, including, but not limited to: a device configured to monitor physiological characteristics of a patient (e.g., vital signs), a pulse oximetry (SpO2) device, a heart monitoring device (e.g., heart rate monitor), an electrocardiograph (ECG) device, an electroencephalograph (EEG) device, a blood pressure monitoring device (e.g., an invasive or non-invasive blood pressure monitoring device), a body temperature monitoring device, a cardiac output monitoring device, a capnography (CO2) monitoring device, a respiration monitoring device, and/or the like. Alternatively, or in addition, as used herein, a patient device may refer to a device configured to perform a healthcare-related function for a patient, including, but not limited to: a therapy device, a drug delivery device, an intravenous therapy device, a respiration device (e.g., an oxygen delivery device, a sleep-apnea device, and/or the like), a heart assistance device (e.g., a pacemaker), a renal assist device (e.g., a dialysis machine), a liver support device, and/or the like.
Patient devices may generate outputs including, but not limited to: audio outputs, visual outputs, and/or the like. A patient device may be configured to generate status outputs. As used herein, a “status output” refers to an output pertaining to the nominal operation of a patient device. A status output may refer to a so-called “heartbeat” output indicating that the patient device is functioning within particular bounds (e.g., is turned on and/or is operating nominally). A patient device may be further configured to generate alarm outputs. As used herein, an “alarm output” refers to an output triggered by an alarm condition. An alarm condition refers to a condition and or event pertaining to the patient device including, but not limited to: a condition pertaining to a monitoring function of the patient device (e.g., monitoring a heart rate value that falls below a threshold), a condition pertaining to a healthcare function of the patient device (e.g., an amount of medication available to be dispensed from a drug dispensing device falling below a threshold), a condition pertaining to the patient device itself (e.g., power loss, power noise, network connectivity loss, wear level), and/or the like.
Patient devices may be placed in close proximity to a patient. The outputs generated by the patient devices may disturb the patient. For example, outputs of patient devices in a hospital room may prevent patients from sleeping properly, which may adversely impact the health of the patients. Some outputs generated by patient devices may not be important to the care of the patient. Moreover, alarm outputs generated by the patient devices themselves (e.g., in a particular patient's room) may not be readily detected by health care providers, and there may be no way of ensuring that the conditions which raised the alarm are resolved within an acceptable time frame. Therefore, what are needed are systems and methods for managing outputs of patient devices that reduce disturbances to the patient. In addition, systems and methods for routing alarms to appropriate personnel, ensuring that the alarms are received, and/or verifying that conditions giving rise to the alarms are resolved are also needed.